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As the first anniversary of the Coalition’s election looms, Environment Victoria slams the Baillieu Government for turning its back on solar and wind power.

THE BAILLIEU Government has come under fire from Environment Victoria after the group said the Coalition is at this stage failing all environmental assessments.

Concerns arose in response to Baillieu’s Amendment VC82, which gives individual landholders the right to veto wind-farm development within two kilometres of their property.

Statistics sourced from Climate Spectator and Environment Victoria

Environment Victoria’s Campaigns Director Mark Wakeham said the amendment sends a signal to the clean energy industry that it is not welcome in Victoria.

“We seem to be making decisions to maintain our addiction to brown coal and turn our backs on two of the fastest growing industries in the world, in solar and wind power,” he said.

Statistics sourced from Sustainability Victoria

Municipal Association of Victoria President, Councillor Bill McArthur, said that although the environment is a major area of concern, the MAV supports the exclusion zones implemented by the Baillieu government.

“Our councils that we interact with have certainly been quite supportive of that new ruling and unless our members tell us otherwise we would certainly support them in their endeavours to get a good outcome for their communities,” he said.

“Why it’s different from any other energy generating facility, that is yet to be explained.”

Environment Victoria’s assessment on the Baillieu Government will be released late November.

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown welcomes Labor’s announcement of an independent inquiry into Australia’s print and online media as part of the Convergence Review.

SENATOR Bob Brown has announced that while he is pleased Labor’s independent media inquiry is at arm’s length from the parliament, the Murdoch media still needs to be taken on to ensure opinions are not mixed with news.

“Where people are wronged by the media… they need to be able to get rapid redress and they need to be able to feel safe,” he said.

“I’d like to see that upheld and I think most decent Australians would as well.”

However Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has made it clear that the inquiry will not address the issue of media ownership, as the Greens have been pressing for.

“I don’t need an inquiry to establish that the Murdoch press owns 70 per cent of newspapers in this country,” he said.

Monash University Head of Journalism, Professor Chris Nash, said the Greens have had a “gut-full” of the Murdoch media negatively projecting and discussing them with no punitive action from the Press Council.

“For bias, it’s not even a slap on the wrist,” he said.

The inquiry will provide its findings to the Convergence Review early next year.

TONY Abbott has refused to support offshore processing in countries that are not signatories of the UN Refugee Convention, ruling out Malaysia but not Nauru.

Asylum seeker organisations have condemned the Liberal party’s legislative amendments, which could potentially provide no legal guarantee of free access to the courts, as outlined in the UN Refugee Convention.

Opposition Shadow Minister for Finance Andrew Robb says that should the Liberals be re-elected, they will reopen the Nauru detention centre in an effort to restrict asylum seekers’ access to the courts.

“People could be processed off-shore and not have access to the endless legal opportunities that would exist onshore,” he said.

Campaign coordinator for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Pamela Curr, voiced concerns that there is a lack of willingness in politics to accept the fact that people have a right to seek asylum.

“The liberal party is arguing for Nauru for the simple reason that they can close the doors,” she said.

“It means that people have to remain silent while they’re going through their cases, or they risk losing the chance of being accepted.”

It sounds like the name of a monster emerging from a billabong. As my online journalism unit commences, I am increasingly aware of just how out of touch I am with the real world – that is, the online virtual world that seems so damn alien to me.

So here are my first tentative words. Be kind, cruel world. Twitter, WordPress, Delicious; you all seem so much larger than me! And with all the tweeting and blogging and following going on, it’s as though I’m stumbling in your giant footprints. Gone are the days checking emails twice-weekly. I’ve been thrown into the deep end. In a big way.